To be fucking livid - DH, lost money

[Jamtartforme]

We’re skint, in the red every month. 2 kids, mortgage has gone up horrifically, nursery fees, COL, I’m sure many of you will know what it’s like.

DH isn’t lazy, he pulls his weight around the house but only when it comes to ‘obvious’ tasks. Such as washing up, or walking the dog. If its a task you can’t ‘see’ or doesn’t need to be done as part of routine - for example, arranging a birthday party or applying for school - it won’t even register. I do 95% of the mental load stuff, minimum.

This has caused a few rows between us, his point being I don’t let him do anything because when he does do it he fucks it up. But every time I do he just messes it up - he forgets medical appointments, fills in forms wrong, or relies on me to spoon feed him instructions to such an extent that I may as well do whatever it is myself.

Fine, I said, you can deal with the tax free childcare account for nursery. All good.

Fast forward to this evening and I discover that not one fucking payment has been made from the tax free account since last year. He’s been making the payments from our account and just assuming the deduction was being made because he had given the nursery our tax free code. He couldn’t be bothered to look into it all properly and work out how to use the account, even less actually work out how much we should be paying with the deduction, and now we have lost 2 fucking grand in the last year that we really, really do not have.

How angry would you be? I’m livid and can hardly look at him.

I am your DH in this case, tho never done anything that bad.

things that help;
shared online calendar
wall whiteboard with weekly appointments
year planner with a view of hols.
lots of lists for things like parties and holiday, what to pack and when.
He needs systems.

also the kids aren’t young for long so load him up with all the non kid related tasks and when they are teenagers you’ll have an easy life.

I have an apparently very professionally competent dh who drives me batshit with lack of forward thinking and financial scattiness like this. After a decade of terrible money issues I just officially took that side over - but there are still issues from time to time. After more than 2 decades I realise it's just not going to change but it does gave me the rage sometimes. What does he do for work?

OP I understand why you are feeling so frustrated. (Though I also think tfc is deliberately over-complicated & unclear to put people off claiming.)

For me, a lot would hinge on his response. Is he trying to sort it out, remorseful about it, showing he realises he’s messed up from his actions. And not in the immediate aftermath but going forward.

It sounds like fully handing some things over might be best - you shouldn’t even know when the vaccination appointment is if that’s his job. If then he still can’t be bothered to care (when he doesn’t have the safety net of you reminding him all the time) then that’s a dealbreaker.

Men's brains are wired so they can't do paper work, admin or deal with finances? Interesting.
I guess that's why they're so underrepresented in the business world.

Although having said that it’s not ok he lost the money. So YANBU. He’s made a mistake and it’s his money he’s lost as well.

I do think the suggestion of spoon feeding is odd. This is what my H says 'but no one sat down and told me'. Well no, but no one did that with me either and I just worked it out myself!

I now tell him to figure out who sat me down and spoon fed me and he can then ask them to do the same with him! But I do all finance stuff that impacts on me.

Not at all, different learners. Some people learn differently such as kinetically / don't think ahead. People just don't appear in a job and pick it up, they learn overtime and have a routine etc. My point being everyone moaning about how perfect they are to learn something and how they expect everyone to be the same.

I think my annoyance would depend what his paid job is. If he's a project manager, for example then I would assume that this is complete thoughtlessness. If his job is more physical than mental then maybe he's just not got the mental ability.

I think you can probably get the nursery to pay you the money back and then you pay them via the vouchers. In future perhaps assign more than 50% of household jobs to him and you do all the mental load stuff. It will save aggro.

But you’re classing not doing a specific thing as being lazy! Surely to conclude whether someone is lazy or not means looking at the bigger picture?

by ‘being realistic’ I mean accepting some people are good in some areas, not good in other areas. This doesn’t directly mean you either don’t have high expectations or someone’s lazy.

my DH would struggle with a lot of the stuff I do, but likewise I’d struggle with a lot of the stuff he does. It’s more important to have a balance in a relationship. Recognising people have difficulty with specific tasks and then expecting them to fulfil them is where the problem lies.

Dont be daft. If I was single I would have a deal with an energy supplier but possibly not the best one and I wouldnt regularly shop around for the best prices. I wouldn't have solar panels. I would pay for someone to set up the WiFi system at our house (it's not at all straightforward) or maybe just use WiFi in the 1 room of the house where the router is and accept that as a limitation. And I'd have free-standing shelf units or wonky shelves or, again, pay someone to put them up.

I guess if he was a single parent the OPs husband would carry on not getting childcare credits. Lots of people don't get a the benefits they are entitled to because they can't figure out how to access them.

Ok, you're shit at DIY.

And?

Do their brains make them lie as well? Because there is no excuse for her DH telling her he was using the tax free childcare when he wasn't. If he couldn't figure the system out, he should have asked. Not lost £2,000 because he didn't like to say he couldn't do it.

Yes the main thing is there should be a balance. I'm disabled and therefore do less of the physical stuff in the house but I do all mental load stuff. It works fine.

Totally agree with this... He sounds like a good partner, does 50 chores, childcare etc.. You didn't notice the payments leaving your account either (which I find strange as we both check our account often) so I think you're both responsible
. To be sexist about it I have never heard of a man who thinks of a child's birthday party months in advance (i dont either)

I disagree with the pitchfork wielders who are saying that he did it on purpose. I think that's a ridiculous suggestion. He obviously thought he'd done it right. He wouldn't have been cheerfully checking their overdrawn bank balance every month and sniggering to himself would he.

And if op had made this mistake many people would come on to say that there are two adults in the house so your dh needs to take some responsibility, how come they didn't notice either etc.

It's a bloody awful mistake. Anyone who's made a stupid 'kicking yourself afterwards' mistake will understand. The problem is that when we ourselves make a mistake it is entirely understandable/extenuating circumstances but when other people make one they're stupid.

Whilst different people may function differently, I hate it when people say women are better at this or that than men or vice versa. That attitude is a huge cause of inequality in the workplace and society. If you have children do you tell the boys that they will better at maths and science, as some people did when I as at school? I hope not.

Yeah I’d be angry too OP. It was all senseless.

Things that have helped my marriage:

• a physical wall calendar, if it’s not on there it’s not happening. Also when asked about something, I can just point to it.
• joint email account - this is used for all bills, school etc.. he has no excuse now to claim that he didn’t know anything.
• I don’t answer (the majority of) questions any more. Just say I don’t know so he has to find the answer. This might sound like I’m being awkward but the information is usually as above - calendar/email.

I’m better at organising finances (with spreadsheets!) so I do that. He’s good at other things - he does all car related stuff which bores me stupid.

It took a while to get to this ‘happy’ medium. It was reading mumsnet that spurred me into action!!

OP you clearly don't see your DP as a partner - you speak about him like he's a child. That issue is all yours and is one you should seek to address, because you've allowed your resentment to change the rest of the dynamic.

Half the people on this thread are talking about the DH like he’s a child. One who can’t be expected to work out how to do some basic financial transactions without a detailed handover and ongoing coaching and support and regular check ins.

If he wants to be treated like a partner I’d expect him to act like one and that means taking responsibility for things he committed to doing.

You’re talking like the OP asked her DH to take over running her business for a few weeks or something.

It’s just paying money to their childcare provider from the correct account. You don’t need to have your brain wired a certain way in order to do it.

This might have been bought up before but would the nursery entertain helping you out here? If you call them, explain what has happened and ask if they would consider allowing you to make the payment from the tax free account and they refund the other money once the tax free payment has gone through?

I know some providers allow for this via the vouchers scheme, whereby if someone pays initially by cash and then pays by voucher the cash amount can be refunded.

As you know he is so incompetent, maybe you should have checked?
I know that does nothing to solve the problem of his utter uselessness but at least would have seen the account and not lost the money- if indeed it is definitely lost.

He didn't do it on purpose, as in thought "Hey, I know, I just won't do it." He did it on purpose by not bothering. He did it on purpose by thinking that something else was more important of that OP wouldn't really notice so he could get away with not putting the effort in.

It's just as bad as actively not doing it, but gives a veil of excuse to hide behind. And those excuses aren't ones he even needs to make, others make them for him!

Unless this guy can't read and write, can't calculate how much petrol he needs or how much a round of beers is, he's fully competent to do life tasks, such as this. He just thinks he doesn't need to bother.

Op I'd be raging and asking how he plans on making that money up to his kids.

50% of visible chores. Childcare, but not caregiving such as taking the baby for vaccinations. Any fool can take the bins out when told to, or watch his own children. The mental load and delegation and creation of systems – the whiteboards and calendars and lists – are harder than the physical chores because you can’t switch them off the way you can the physical chore. I’d love to be delegated to and not think about the house – “DP, you only had to ask me for help and tell me what to do!”

If OP has to double check her husband’s work and look at the bank account and the TFC account and check it’s all been done correctly, what exactly is the point of him doing the very minor admin of paying money into the TFC account and out again? What is the point of him at all?

Dont be daft. If I was single I would have a deal with an energy supplier but possibly not the best one and I wouldnt regularly shop around for the best prices. I wouldn't have solar panels. I would pay for someone to set up the WiFi system at our house (it's not at all straightforward) or maybe just use WiFi in the 1 room of the house where the router is and accept that as a limitation. And I'd have free-standing shelf units or wonky shelves or, again, pay someone to put them up.

I guess if he was a single parent the OPs husband would carry on not getting childcare credits. Lots of people don't get a the benefits they are entitled to because they can't figure out how to access them.

I'm single and I've literally done all of those things. I organise and set up all the relevant things for my elderly parents too. I have ADHD, and some things are most definitely harder for me than they are for the average man or woman. I'm not bragging, it's just that there's just me, and I get on with it. I suspect that if there was just the OP's H, he'd have to get on with it too, and with no wife around to fix it all for him or remind him of everything, his children would end up vaccinated, at school more or less on time, and he'd have worked out the childcare credits - because he'd be in the habit of learning to do it all properly, having learnt from repeated experience that life is harder when you don't. The only gender stereotyped task that I haven't taught myself to do is car maintainance beyond checking tyre pressures and keeping oil and water topped up. I don't know how to do an oil change, change filters or change a bulb in my car headlights because I outsource that to my mechanic or the AA (who I compare prices with at each renewal because that's ridiculously easy these days but that's by the by). It's still my mental load to take it to the mechanic when it needs something, keep to a schedule of service and MOTs etc. Nothing bad is going to happen because I outsource minor mechanical things that I could technically learn how to do myself. I can afford the 50p for a bulb change that my mechanic charges, and I had the nauus to go to my mechanic when I found that Halfords wanted £25 for the same thing.

In this day and age of Dr Google and How to YouTube videos I simply don't agree that the physiological tendencies of male brains to differ from female brains are the reason why men leave women' to carry the mental load in family households.

Sounds exactly like my other half, who has autism and ADHD and can’t string a thought process together like a competent person.

You have my sympathy. It is so tough to live with.